I’ve been a software trainer and technical writer for nearly 18 years. Before that, I was the employee who was eager to learn new techniques and share them with colleagues. My dad was a photography instructor in the Navy. So, perhaps I inherited a teaching gene.

Last Fall, I acted on a long-time inclination and sought out firearms training. I wanted to get a concealed carry permit, and thought I should be well-informed before I took the leap of buying a gun. While I expected to be a bit nervous (and I was), I was also excited to learn something utterly new. Fortunately, I picked a very good instructor, whose manner made me immediately comfortable. Once he walked me through the mechanics of safely handling revolvers and semi-automatic pistols, any nervousness evaporated.

When he took me to the indoor gun range, it was love at first shot. Let me explain: target shooting is not an act of aggression. It’s the satisfaction of achieving precision with a mechanical device. I’ve felt the same way when piloting a race car at speed, back when I was in SCCA (Sports Car Club of America). I’ve experienced the same thrill when I turned the last bolt on an engine, then turned the ignition key to bring it to life. Soon, I was going to the range at least once a week, often more. It’s a fantastic stress reliever!

Teaching Others

When some of my women friends found out I was shooting, they asked if they could tag along. Their well-meaning husbands had bought guns for them to carry, but they’d never shot them. Soon, I fell naturally into instructor mode, showing them what I’d learned, and helping them get comfortable with their guns (and incidentally helping them figure out that their husbands’ choices might not be what they really wanted). I found myself devouring books, magazines, and YouTube videos in a drive to improve my shooting so I could pass on what I was learning.

Learning New Skills

I took (and passed) the GLOCK Certified Armorer’s Course so I could maintain my own pistols. It was gratifying to get my hands dirty taking such a well-conceived mechanical device apart and putting it back together (no parts left over!) It reminded me of the first Volkswagen engine I built: seeing how cleverly parts were designed, and how they all worked together, was very satisfying to the logical, mechanical side of my thinking.

I decided that I should formalize my role as an instructor, so I began pursuing the necessary series of NRA-sanctioned courses. And now, I’m proud to say, I’m officially an NRA Certified Pistol Instructor!

While my main livelihood will no doubt still be software training, I’m soon going to deploy a site under the Target: Libertas banner you see above. The concept is that defending one’s personal liberty is a desirable target, and I want to enable more people to be safe, responsible, sane gun owners, so they will be empowered to protect their own liberty and the safety of their loved ones. I especially want to concentrate on teaching women to safely defend themselves—and maybe discover the joy of shooting, too.

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People are apparently afraid to use the word “me,” as if it bespeaks some poisonous egotism. And they seem to find “myself” some sort of comfortable solution when they’re in doubt. To wit:

“Bob called Mary and I.”

Would you say “Bob called I”? No. Break it into two pieces: “Bob called Mary. Bob called me.” Now, glue it back together: “Bob called Mary and ME.”

By the way, there seems to be some belief that “and I” is a clump of words that always goes together: and-I. Nope.

“If you have questions, call Greg or myself.”

Would you say, “If you have questions, call myself?” No. “Myself” is for actions that you perform TO YOURSELF, not actions performed by someone else. You can say “I hurt MYSELF when I stubbed my toe.” But it’s “Barry hurt ME when he slapped ME.” So the example sentence should read, “If you have questions, call Greg or ME.”

“Bill and myself will be at the store early.”

Would you say “Myself will be at the store”? Of course not. The example sentence should read, “Bill and I will be at the store early.”

There. I feel better. Whatever ultimately claims me, I will not die from an unvented spleen.

When you create type on a path in InDesign or Illustrator, you’re given five options: Rainbow, Skew, 3D Ribbon, Stair Step, and the truly hilarious Gravity.

The names Ribbon, Stair Step, and Gravity reasonably describe the appearance of the text on the path. But not Skew and 3D Ribbon: “Skew” looks like a 3D ribbon, and “3D Ribbon” is, well, skewed. The names are swapped!

Type on a Path Options: what’s wrong with this picture?

My guess? A summer intern swapped the names way back when, and the mistake has carried through to this day.

I know there are far more important issues to address in terms of software improvement, but how hard would it be to fix this?

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Before you wade into this, it might be helpful to know that I’m in the graphic arts industry, working as a trainer, writer, production artist, and retoucher. Thus, my primary applications are Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Only rarely do I venture into Microsoft Word, and I only launch Excel when I have to fill out an expense report. Consequently, my requirements are that a laptop have a good color display, plenty of RAM, and good performance.

I’m a Mac user of 25 years’ standing, and I still regard the Mac as my native habitat. But because most of my clients in the AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) space are on Windows, I need a PC laptop for training sessions. I’ve had ThinkPads for years, because I value their reliability and excellent keyboards, but they were heavy. After years of carrying around heavy MacBook Pros and ThinkPads, I switched last year to a MacBook Air and a Surface Pro 3—together, they weighed about what my 15-inch MacBook Pro did.

So, why buy a Surface Pro 4 when my SP3 is only a year old? Well, the increased RAM (16GB; the SP3 maxes out at 8GB),the new model weighs a skosh less (1.7 lb, as compared to the 1.8 lb SP3—big deal), has a slightly larger display (a whopping 12.3 inch in versus the 12 inch SP3), and the supposedly even better stylus and keyboard.

Unboxing

The package is Apple-like in its elegance and simplicity (put down the pitchforks, fanboys). There’s a clear plastic tab on the lower right corner with a subtle pointer indicating that you should make an incision so you can pull out the innards. There is almost no text, no instructions, just a lovely photo of the SP4 on the sleeve. If you lack the spatial reasoning skills to open it, you’ll never get to enjoy the SP4.

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A client is creating company documents in InDesign CC 2015, then packaging and zipping them to share with colleagues in other offices. But when some of the recipients unzip the archives and open the InDesign file, many of the links are missing. Yet, when the client sends me the zip archive, I can unzip and open the InDesign file without any missing links. What’s going on?

As I dug into the links, I discovered that some of them had very long file names, and the main project folder name was a bit long. Why would this matter?

InDesign sees a link’s “identity” as its complete directory path. For example, “Industrial_Warehouse_Interior_revised_shot_JohnForbes_2.jpg” is 59 characters. Put that file in the Links folder (5 more characters), inside the “Simpson Farms_leasing presentation_onscreen” folder (43 characters), and you’re up to 107 characters. Add the server name, volume, enclosing folder, etc., and the cumulative directory path gets even longer.

Some special characters (such as slashes and asterisks) are forbidden, but there were no special characters in any of the link file names. They were putting the zip files on the server, uncompressing the zipped archive, and then trying to update their links. Apparently, the servers my client’s colleagues are using have been set to truncate filenames beyond a certain length. This was preventing InDesign from finding the desired links: “Industrial_Warehouse_Interior_revised_shot_JohnForbes_2.jpg” might become“Industrial_Warehouse_Interior_rev~.jpg,” and thus InDesign can’t find the file it’s looking for.

The easy fix? Rather than working on the project over the network, colleagues were instructed to just unzip the archive on their local drive and work from there—then, all the links were fine!

In the future, I’ve encouraged my client to stick to shorter file names—then it won’t matter whether his colleagues work over a network. For example, “Industrial_Warehouse_Interior_revised_shot_JohnForbes_2.jpg” could easily be renamed to “WarehouseInterior.jpg.” You get the idea…

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Last week, I met a high school design teacher, who was describing the ups and downs of teaching print and design principles to teenagers.

I was appalled to hear of the ignorance of simple, basic math concepts that I’d mastered by the third grade (maybe because I went to Catholic school in the 50s). He laughed about asking students to cut a 20″ x 15″ board in half—one student whined, “Does 15 have a half?” He told them to use their rulers and measure the dimensions of the boards so they could figure out where to cut, and then had to explain that they needed to measure from the “1” end of the ruler, not the other end.

To combat this stunning ignorance, he’s instituted what he calls “Math Mondays,” during which he presents exercises intended to hone their primitive math skills so they’ll be able to function at a base level in a design position.
I’ve encountered similar math shortfalls in adults. I was contacted by a student from one of my public design classes, who (at least) remembered that she should add one-eighth of an inch bleed. “But,” she lamented, “there’s no place to put in fractions. It wants decimal numbers, and I have no idea how to do that.” I walked her through pulling out her calculator, entering “1,” then pressing “divided by,” typing “8,” then pressing Enter. I’d hoped for the sound of discovery, but heard only, “Huh, oh, OK.” If she ever has to specify 3/8, she’ll call me again, I’m sure.

Boomp.

That’s the sound of my forehead hitting the desk.

I explain the concept of short-fold panels in some classes, and impart my opinion on the amount of the shortening. I think one-eighth of an inch is too much, and one-sixteenth is too tight. “So,” I ask, “what is the ‘Goldilocks compromise value’ between 1/8 and 1/16?” Only once in the last 5 years has someone answered “3/32”—a guy who had done some carpentry work and had actually seen a ruler up close. In all other classes, I’ve been met with a sea of blank stares. I draw a stylized pie on the whiteboard, and divide it with the marker. Still nothing. There’s nothing in their heads for math concepts to ignite.

What the hell have they been teaching kids for the last 30 years?! Are they getting participation trophies for that, too? You’d think all that Sesame Street cuteness would have imparted some basic math, wouldn’t you?

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I wouldn’t dream of questioning your visual imagination. On the other hand…

I see that you’ve created a business card in the middle of a letter-sized page. That’s not what “use white space” means.

You’ve created your 24-page brochure as 12 separate reader-spread Illustrator files. Bonus points for taking the extra time to convert all your text to outlines. Double points for doing that before spell-checking. We will enjoy billing you for the extra time it will take to correct the copy and break up the files for proper imposition.

How imaginative of you to create a white reverse heading and two body paragraphs on a black background with a black rectangle and three separate text frames. Is this a new thing—billing by the frame?

Your template (clearly built by someone else) is full of well-built paragraph and character styles. However, every single paragraph is formatted “Normal+.” You are such a rebel.

How very efficient of you to crop all of your images to the trim size. How very sad that we will have to bill you for cloning background so the job will have bleed.

Building your business card as a 52Mb Photoshop file with Smart Objects for the logos demonstrates, well, that you have Photoshop (or, as you always type it in emails, “PhotoShop”). Fun fact #1: Smart Objects render as pixels, regardless of how you save a Photoshop file. Fun fact #2: we could have built that in InDesign in 5 minutes, as opposed to the 6 hours it took you. Fun fact #3: we figured that if you were smart enough to built a business card in Photoshop, you’d be smart enough to build it the wrong size. We were right.

You will be surprised to know that there is a much easier way to create tables than creating 20 separate text frames and drawing rules with the Pen tool. Maybe next time you’ll at least align the text frames. Probably not.

Look down at your keyboard. On the left side, there’s a key labeled “tab.” Press it. Now, isn’t that easier than thumbing the spacebar 47 times? By the way, if pressing the tab key doesn’t move text to the desired position, don’t press it again. For the love of civilization, create a tab stop.

Perhaps you’re creating your artwork on an old IBM Selectric typewriter. That would explain why there are two spaces after every sentence. Just so you know, all the hip kids know to use a single space. But maybe you like that retro look.

More than anything, thanks for all the overtime we’re going to be making this weekend, fixing your files!

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There are a lot of things to like about Acrobat DC: expanded Preflight profiles, the ability to edit PDFs on an iPad, the great new Custom Tool feature—and EchoSign is wonderful.

However, I still have trouble accepting the colorful Hello Kitty® tool grid. “Comment” and “Send for Comments” are both yellow—makes perfect sense. But why are “Export PDF,” “Certificates,” and “Rich Media” the same color? “Measure” and “Prepare Form”?

Beyond that, I wish we could rearrange the tools in the Tools array to our liking, and maybe even put in little dividers like you can with the Custom Tools feature.

But try to drag one, and you can’t—they’re stuck.

However, during a recent demo, I discovered that you *can* rearrange the tools—but it’s kind of painful.

I added the shortcut for the Print Production tool to the righthand pane, and then moved it up to the second position in the pane. Voilà (French for “I moved a tool”)—now the Print Production tool is second in the Tools array!

Moving a tool in the right hand pane causes the tool to be repositioned in the Tools array.

However, if I delete the Print Production shortcut from the righthand pane, the tool returns to its default location in the Tools array.

Removing the tool shortcut from the right hand pane causes it to return to its default position in the Tools array.

So, I’m afraid the only way to rearrange tools in the main array is to add them all to the righthand pane (which will make you crazy), and then drag them up and down in the pane. This just isn’t workable, but I’m throwing it out there in case someone finds it beneficial.

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I’d been seeing posts about the “flat design movement” for some time, mind you. But I’m not a designer (nor fashionable in any sense of the word), so I was not obligated to care, and I just thought it would pass. No such luck.

Tired of carrying heavy stuff around, I just bought a svelte little MacBook Air. The joy of that New Computer Smell is tempered by the fact that it came from the factory with OS X 10.10, Yosemite (at least they don’t name operating systems after cats any more).

I understand some of the objection to skeuomorphism; do we really need shiny chrome interfaces, or detailed stitching on realistic leather calendar backgrounds? Probably not. That sort of stuff had inspired a cottage industry of how-to videos featuring 127-step tutorials on how to make blobby blue glass buttons.

But THIS?

I understand the concept of “flat design.” Well, the “flat” part, anyway. I can’t bring myself to think of it as “design.”

Look at the poor Finder icon:

On the left: The old Mac “Janus” finder face.On the right: Wimpy blue happy face Finder.

The Emperor’s New Flat Design. Sheesh. A 4th-grader could do this with ducky scissors.

Prediction: There will be a backlash against this boring elementary school approach. But it will be taken too far, adding haptic feedback and sound effects. Soon, scrolling through a directory will be accompanied by a jittery feeling and screeching brrrrrrrrippppp! sound. Buttons will click with a pronounced snick. Close a window, and you’ll hear something like the old Star Trek sssffffp door close effect. Select a range of text in InDesign, and it will feel like you’re dragging your mouse across corduroy.